A Penguin in the Orchard

Good Reading

Nita

The new apartment (yes, another new apartment) is the usual carpet and lino, with one lovely exception. Hardwood in the kitchen and dining area.

Geek

By 10:15 by my clock, it was amazing, and several times on my walk home I saw the moon, and each time I stopped to ponder. Nothing like a lunar eclipse to humble men.

Lileks

Did I mention what he was wearing when he made that last appearance here in Minneapolis? Plaid pants, track suit, a Li’l Kim T-shirt, big white afro and a gold chain so thick the USS Lincoln could have used it to winch up the anchor. It was just mortifying.

Josh

If I may offer a suggestion to Disney, the next step should be to glue the DVD into a laptop to prevent copying. After two days, the whole laptop self-destructs, saving you a trip to the video store and saving Disney the horrors of copyright infringement.

Mitch

But, let’s go further and talk about the Big Secret: People don’t read before they do much of anything. We go through life thinking our solutions to the challenges of living, organizing and much else are totally original. If only we’d learn a little history, read constantly to keep our minds working, we’d find that the real challenge of coming up with new ideas is vast and inspiring. We live at the pinnacle of history and it is always growing beneath us, slowing subsuming us if we don’t actually contribute something new; every time we speak, thinking ourselves original without reading and thinking deeply first, we do little more than scrape our initials into the pyramids and not erect something that rivals the achievements of the past.

And, of course, Doc

Here’s the real bottom line: Being in a conversation beats being out of one. That’s the whole deal. Are there cliques? Maybe. But nothing like any of us experienced in high school, or even in most of our jobs. Blogs are public journals with conversational aspects that sometimes get social (like, at a trade show or the occassional party). There is politics in everything, I suppose. Subagendas, power trips. But I can’t think of any place where that kind of shit gets exposed and undermined faster, or more effectively, than it does with blogging.

Frankly’s 300th entry brought to you by … others. It’s good stuff.